Midnight
by nikkinor
Summary: “I pull my knees up to my chest, raping my arms around them and burying my head as close to my legs as I could, stifling the few cries that escaped my mouth.


Title: Midnight

Rating: K+ (but I guess it could be K)

Paring: None

Summary: "I pull my knees up to my chest, raping my arms around them and burying my head as close to my legs as I could, stifling the few cries that escaped my mouth."

Disclaimer: NCIS doesn't belong to me, and it never will.

Spoilers: Black Water, and possibly Reveille and Chained

A/N: This was my entry into the "Midnight" flash fic LJ community. Thank you Dreamer20715 for being a great beta, all those mistakes would still be there if you didn't help me out.

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_Bang!_

The front door closed with a powerful slam.

I had been lying awake in my bed for a few hours now, knowing he could come home at any time, but I still sleeplessly lay in bed listening for that heavy oak door to slam right before midnight.

I got up quietly, trying my hardest not to make a sound, even though my door was closed and he was making more noise than a herd of elephants as he staggered down the hallway. I opened the door to my closet, cautiously pulling the handle to remove the door enough for me to slide in. I stopped as I hit the sticky part in the hinge, hating how loud it seemed to be. I stopped everything as I heard the staggering outside my door for the most part subside.

"Boy, you wake?" His slurred and muffled voice echoed through my ears, all the beers he had tonight making 'boy' sound like 'loy' and 'wake' sound like 'lake'. 

I still didn't move and I definitely didn't wanna answer. Even the slightest action on my part could make him a whole lot madder than I wanted see right then.

I heard the table in the hallway fall over and the unsteady swaying start again, one lazy drunk foot in front of the other. I slid into my closet, shoving a pair of my shoes out of my way and tossing the shirt I had worn the day before to the other side of the cramped place.

My mother had told me many times that when he came home drunk to just hide in my closet, don't get in his way and stay there till morning. After mom died, he drank more and more. It used to just be Friday nights. Dad got drunk and mom and I hid in my closet when he got home. But now it was more like every night that I was hiding in my closet, scared to come out for any reason after the time he put a scar on my leg. He hadn't meant it, he really hadn't meant to hit me with the shot glass; I went to use the bathroom, hoping that he was asleep, but in his drunken state he thought someone was breaking into the house and had hit me with the little glass cup.

"One of these days I'm gonna find out who killed your mother." The words slurred together again, mixing the 'th's with 'f's and the 'd's with 'l's.

I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them and buried my head as close to my legs as I could, stifling the few cries that escaped my mouth. I wasn't a wimp; I just didn't want to hear another one of his rants about mom. She wasn't murdered, she died from cancer, but my father had yet to accept that. I hated it when he brought up mom. He had called me a baby for crying at the funeral and the first few times he said her name. I hated that.

"When I find him, me and you will make him pay for what he did, won't we son?"

He made me report to him every day after school while making him a Macallen 18, and everyday he would make me tell him some new way we might find him, some new way to find a killer who didn't exist.

"But I need some sleep, so you better go to bed now, boy."

His bedroom door opens then shuts with a bang as the staggering was even more muffled till he finally went to sleep. I stayed in the closet all night though, with an old blanket to keep me warm and the little brown teddy bear my mother had given me years before and told me to keep safe right before she died. I hugged the bear close to me and eventually slipped off to sleep.

Seven-year-old Anthony DiNozzo feel asleep at midnight in his closet on a cold fall Friday night.


End file.
